BiffVernon Blogspot

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Climate Genocide

This morning, 20th November, anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials, documents asking the police to investigate Crimes under the International Criminal Court Act 2001 were lodged with the police at a number of police stations.

In Louth, Lincolnshire, two colleagues and I delivered a document, see below, asking that the police investigate a crime. The officer we spoke to said it was not a matter that he could deal with and suggested we send it to the Home Office. We begged to differ and he agreed to scan the document and provide us with an incident number but indicated that he intended to take the matter no further.

We understand the unprecedented nature of the case and that it was outwith the experience of the officer we spoke to but we do expect the case to be investigated and passed to the Crown Prosecution Service.

I have written to the Chief Constable of Lincolnshire Police, Bill Skelly, asking him to take action.

The document we delivered follows:

Request
to conduct a criminal investigation and charge three people for crimes
committed under the International Criminal Court Act 2001

Request to the police to press charges for crimes against
humanity and genocide against former prime ministers David William Donald
Cameron, Theresa Mary May, and against serving prime minister Boris Johnson (Alexander
Boris de Pfeffel Johnson).

2. Crimes against humanity: definition

Crimes against humanity are certain acts that are
deliberately committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed
against any civilian or an identifiable part of a civilian population.

3. Genocide: definition

Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide says:

“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the
following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

·Killing members of the group;

·Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members
of the group;

·Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions
of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

·Imposing measures intended to prevent births
within the group;

·Forcibly transferring children of the group to
another group.”

4. UK legislation

These crimes were initially incorporated into UK legislation
by the Genocide Act 1969, which was repealed and replaced by the International
Criminal Court Act 2001.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2001/17/contents

5. Who is guilty?

The police are requested to mount an investigation into these
allegations and to bring charges against the three figures who have greatest
responsibility for the crimes committed (David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris
Johnson). There is a case that former prime ministers, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair
and John Major should be prosecuted, but further work needs to be done to
establish the extent of their crimes and the likelihood of securing a
conviction.

There is also a strong case to prosecute other government
ministers and key business figures who have sought to expand polluting
industries, despite certain knowledge that their activities would contribute to
appalling suffering and death. Further work is now being undertaken to
establish whether prosecutions for these crimes should be pursued by the
police.

6. Outline of the crime

6.1 Total number of people being killed

The World Health Organisation (1), Global Humanitarian Forum
(2) and DARA International (3) have issued reports showing that large numbers
of people are now being killed by climate change, with the most recent report
indicating that 400,000 people are being killed per annum, with a large
proportion being killed by the increased spread of disease in our 1°C warmer
world. The DARA International report, for 20 developing countries, which was submitted
to the United Nations, showed that the most vulnerable group were infants under
the age of one year.

Killing children slowly over a few hours, days or weeks is a
terrible way to kill another human being.

6.2 Sahel Region of North Africa

The World Economic Forum (Davos) attributes climate change as
partly to blame for increasing violent conflict. It says that “the United
Nations estimates that roughly 80% of the Sahel's farmland is degraded.
Temperatures there are rising 1.5 times faster than the global average. As a
result, droughts and floods are growing longer and more frequent, undermining
food production. About 50 million people in the Sahel depend on livestock
rearing for survival. But the land available to pastoralists is shrinking.” The
report goes on: “This is particularly the case for Mali and Burkina Faso, both
of which registered the highest conflict-related death tolls in years. Taking
all the G5 Sahel group of countries together, they experienced over four times
the number of fatalities in 2018 when compared to 2012, with 62% of all
reported violent deaths concentrated in Mali.” (4)

6.3 European temperature records broken

Deaths from extreme heat are now better understood, with
thousands of instances identified where people died during periods when
temperature records were broken. The link of extreme heat to climate change was
made clear following the 2003 heat wave in France when 35,000 people were
believed to have died (5). In 2019 France set an all-time high-temperature of
46°C, while the UK, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands also reported
new highs (6). These were again linked to an increase in deaths (7).

The impact of climate change upon drought is better
understood with links identified to the crop failures in 2018 in Latvia and
Lithuania (where a state of emergency was declared). The European Commission
regularly produces reports on crop yields and evidence that links climate
change driven extreme weather to impacts upon agricultural production (8). Here
in the UK, the 2018 drought led to an average reduction of 20% in yields of
onions, lettuces, carrots and potatoes (9).

6.4 Extreme weather events

For many years scientists struggled to provide a direct link
between global heating and an individual extreme hurricane, cyclone, tornado or
other weather event, but direct attribution is now possible in some cases.

The campaigning lawyers, Client Earth, have been building
evidence to inform its litigation and should be approached to establish how
many extreme storms have been worsened by climate breakdown (10).

Immediately after the worst of the 2017 hurricane season
several speakers addressed the UN General Assembly making a direct link between
the devastation and climate change. The Prime Minister of Dominica said his
nation resembled a war zone and warned we have now permanently altered the
climate between the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer (11).

The Bahamas Minister of Foreign Affairs, Darren Henfield, then
said ““For the first time in its history, the Bahamas evacuated whole
communities to safe quadrants ahead of Hurricane Irma. What’s next: wholesale
evacuation of the entire Caribbean?” (12) In 2019 the most powerful hurricane
(Dorian) ever recorded in the Bahamas hit, destroying virtually every home on Abaco
and causing extensive damage to Grand Bahama.

It should be noted that significant numbers of people left
Dominica and Puerto Rico following the 2017 hurricanes and many will not
return. In the case of Puerto Rico 8% of the population left. The initial death
toll was put at 64, but this was later revised to 2,975 based on a study
commissioned by the governor of Puerto Rico (13). This is due to the fact that
far more people die from other causes, over the following weeks, than die from
initial physical injuries caused by high wind speeds and flood.

Turning to Mozambique; following the devastating impact of
Cyclone Idai, the UN said that the storm was one of the worst disasters to ever
hit the southern hemisphere. The cyclone and subsequent flooding killed more
than 600 people, injured an estimated 1,600, affected more than 1.8 million and
caused an estimated $773 million in damages to buildings, infrastructure and
agriculture. The link between climate change and the havoc caused by cyclones
Idai and Kenneth upon Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe was made by the UN (14).

The well respected science journal, ‘Carbon Brief’ has
produced analysis showing that 68% of all extreme weather events studied to
date were made more likely or more severe by human-caused climate change.
Heatwaves account for 43% such events, droughts make up 17% and heavy rainfall
or floods account for 16% (15).

6.5 Death and suffering in the future

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the body
responsible for advising the governments of the world on the science relating
to climate change. It has for many years published alarming warnings about the
pace and impacts of climate change. Its most recent report, the ‘Special Report
on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate’ (16) shows that sea level
rise of up to 2 metres cannot be ruled out by 2100 and that a certain level of
sea level rise is now locked in. The detailed report makes predictions, using
the best available science, to warn how much the seas will rise under different
scenarios, making it clear that current governmental policies will contribute
to the complete destruction of several low lying island states.

In October 2019 a report: ‘New elevation data triple
estimates of global vulnerability to sea-level rise and coastal flooding’, in
the peer reviewed science journal ‘Nature Communications’ warned that the data
used for the height/elevation of land was inaccurate. The report concluded that
large areas of land in the UK and abroad were lower than previously estimated
and were therefore more susceptible to sea level rise. The report warned that climate change would
put three times more people at risk of coastal flooding by 2050 than previously
thought (17).

The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) has vigorously
lobbied for dynamic action to be taken to stop the complete destruction of many
of its member nations (18). If current policies are pursued we expect to lose
Tuvalu, The Solomon Islands and the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, the
Maldives in the Indian Ocean, and many islands in the Caribbean.

The deliberate pursuit of policies that will lead to the
destruction of these nations is an act of genocide. AOSIS should be approached
for statements by members on the effect that the types of policies supported by
the UK government will have upon their nations.

It must be noted that the UN Secretary General warned on 10
Sept 2018 that we now risk “runaway climate change” and that this is “a direct
existential threat” (19). The UN has issued a number of warnings making it clear
that even advanced European nations face devastation. In July 2018 the UN Security Council
considered the security implications of climate change, noting the very wide
range of national security threats (20). The UK is one of only 5 permanent
members of the UN Security Council.

In December 2018 Sir David Attenborough took up ‘The
People’s Seat’ at the COP 24 conference in Poland and warned world leaders that
we now risk “the collapse of civilisation” (21).

Turning to other risks; the World Water Forum predicted that
by 2050 between 4.8 billion and 5.7 billion people will live in areas that are
water-scarce for at least one month each year, up from 3.6 billion today, while
the number of people at risk of floods will increase to 1.6 billion, from 1.2
billion (22).

Other peer reviewed research has warned of the increased
spread of disease due to climate change, with 1 billion more people predicted
to be infected by Zika Virus and Dengue fever by 2080 (23)

This range of increasing pressures are predicted to force
ever more people to flee their homes. Research has warned that we face the
prospects of 1.4 Billion climate refugees by 2060 and 2 billion by 2100 (24).

6.6 Worst case scenarios

In August 2018 a peer reviewed report was published in the
science journal PNAS which warned that various self-reinforcing feedbacks could
push us to what was termed a “Hothouse Earth” state (Trajectories of the Earth
System in the Anthropocene) (25). The report warned of the risk that these
feedbacks could cause a runaway climate effect, even if greenhouse gas
emissions were reduced. The various feedbacks could cause temperatures to
increase by 5°C or 6°C, with appalling consequences for society and human life.

The UN Secretary General has warned that we face the very
real danger of “runaway climate change” and that this is “a direct existential
threat” (19). Many scientists warn that if a runaway effect were to begin, that
would dramatically increase temperatures, and this would result in a collapse
in the human population.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the director of the Potsdam
Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, has warned that the Earth’s
population could “be devastated”. He warns that the carrying capacity of the
planet could be below 1 billion people” (26).

Johan Rockström, also of the Potsdam Institute and former
Director of the Stockholm Resilience centre, who has led research into planetary
boundaries, has warned that climate breakdown could lead to a reduction in the
human population to around 500 million people (27).

Prof James Lovelock has said he was more certain than ever
that billions of people will die over the next century as a result of global
warming. He warned that large parts of the world would be uninhabitable and the
human population would crash (28).

A reduction in the human population to around 500 million, from
around 9.7 billion by mid-century, implies the death of 9.2 billion people. But,
if the collapse occurred around the year 2100, when the population might have
reached 10.9 billion, this would imply the death of 10.4 billion people.

These worst case scenarios are profoundly shocking. Under no
circumstances could a risk of this magnitude ever be justified.

7. The role of David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris
Johnson.

David Cameron and Theresa May were both government ministers
when the Paris COP21 agreement was negotiated. This agreement caused outrage in
many quarters because it allowed the wealthiest nations to facilitate energy
intensive lifestyles that would increase the number of people killed. The
overwhelming majority of the deaths projected would be in the poorest nations
of the world.

The COP21 agreement was in breach of Article 2 of the
European Convention on Human Rights, the right to life. Not only was the UK
government going to maintain energy intensive lifestyles within the UK, it
negotiated a clause that would allow it to increase emissions in some sectors.

COP 21 required that nations adopt policies to contribute to
keeping global average temperatures “well below 2°C” and pursue negative
emissions technologies after the year 2050, throughout the second half of the
century, to reduce temperatures to the 1.5°C threshold by the year 2100. The
quantity of CO2 to be removed from the atmosphere would be unprecedented and
faces extreme technological barriers. Peer reviewed research indicates that the
trajectory we are on will leave the young with a bill of up to $535 trillion to
pay to remove a staggering amount of CO2 and other gases from the atmosphere (29).
Many scientists fear that the technologies proposed will never work at scale or
will be too expensive for implementation, leaving the young to face complete
climate breakdown and mass loss of life (30).

Boris Johnson was responsible for ratifying the COP21
agreement when he was Foreign Secretary and would have been aware that the UK
had negotiated an agreement that would allow greenhouse gas emissions to
increase in some areas and that this would contribute to mass loss of life.

In the light of the various intergovernmental conferences
and UK conferences, the three prime ministers had attended, it is clear they
were all aware that mass loss of life had begun due to climate breakdown and
that this would become exponentially worse in the future. Despite that, they
all supported governmental policies that would increase greenhouse gas
emissions in some sectors and slow the pace of decarbonising the UK economy.

In the case of Theresa May, she was present at the One
Planet conference organised by President Macron of France at which he warned
there could be “billions of victims” (31).

When presented with overwhelming evidence that climate
breakdown would destroy some nations and inflict appalling suffering upon the young,
within the UK and elsewhere, the government failed to adopt policies that would
lead to a rapid decarbonisation of the economy. Because the UK had
industrialised around 200 years before China, and other developing nations, and
had been polluting for far longer, it was clear that the UK had a greater
responsibility to decarbonise more quickly than other nations. Instead of
mandating a range of policies that would dramatically reduce emissions, the
three accused were key figures in maintaining carbon intensive lifestyles.

The three accused could have implemented policies that would
reduce car use, increase public transport, walking and cycling but they
maintained policies that would facilitate high levels of petrol and diesel car
use.

The three accused could have implemented policies that would
have led to the construction of net-zero homes and policies that resulted in
rapid renovation of the existing housing stock, but they undermined efforts
that would have resulted in a rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from
homes and other property.

The three accused also vigorously supported the pursuit of
Fracking technology, a new fossil fuel industry, to get more gas and, when the
technology was shown not to be viable, government announced it would rather
seek new supplies of gas from elsewhere than implement a radical energy
efficiency programme to reduce energy use (32)

The three accused could have ordered a rapid onshore and
offshore wind farm construction programme but they vigorously opposed onshore
wind power in England and refused to support rapid deployment of wind power elsewhere
in the UK. When the evidence showed conclusively that mass loss of life would
ensue, unless the UK made a dynamic shift to a range of renewable technologies,
the government vigorously opposed that model.

Astonishingly, the three accused vigorously supported the
expansion of a number of non-essential luxury activities such as aviation and
ocean cruises. Despite knowing that these would contribute to mass loss of
life, the three accused supported a range of fiscal and planning policies that
facilitated the growth in destructive activities.

On 1 May 2019 Parliament passed a motion of a declaration of
an environmental and climate emergency. Despite a categorical warning that we
face an unprecedented emergency Boris Johnson’s administration made policy
commitments to growing emissions from the aviation sector and plan an increase
of gas from abroad for UK consumption.

8 Examples of government’s genocidal policies

Here is a list of policies which the three named individuals
have actively supported. It is not exhaustive, but proves that the three
accused have sought policies that would increase the number of people being
killed by climate breakdown: -

• In 2015 the
government set up the UK Oil & Gas Authority with the statutory principal
objective of maximising the economic extraction of the UK’s oil and gas
resources. It describes its purpose as “Our purpose is to maximise the economic
recovery of oil and gas.” (33). This was the same year as the UK government negotiated
the Paris COP21 agreement.

• Every
year since 2010, the government had either cut or frozen fuel duties on fossil
fuel diesel & petrol (34). The Chancellor Philip Hammond, stated that this
will have benefitted the transport fossil fuel industry, by the end of the
current budget forecast period, by a staggering £84 billion.

• Since
1980, the government has overseen a reduction in the cost of motoring by 20%
but it has facilitated an increase in the cost of public transport of 64% (35).
This has the effect of increasing fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas
emissions.

• The
government increased Vehicle Excise Duty on more efficient vehicles and reduced
them on less efficient vehicles (36).

• The
government perversely imposed a climate change tax on renewable electricity. It
imposed rateable valuation tax on organisations having solar panels (37) and raised
VAT on solar panels from 5% to 17.5% (38).

• The
government has banned English on-shore wind & solar from receiving any
government subsidies or contracts for difference supply agreements with
national grid (39).

• The
government plans to invest £25 billion in new roads (40) but a mere £120
million annually in new protected sections of a national cycleway network (41).

• According
to EU data the UK gives the highest government subsidies to fossil fuels of any
country in the EU, at £10.5 billion annually (42).

• The UK
government is providing tax subsidies of £24 billion to the North Sea oil &
gas industry. The UK government cut taxes on fracked gas from 62% to 30% making
it, according to the government itself, the most generous scheme in the world
for fracked gas (43) (32).

• The
government increased planning restrictions on onshore wind-turbines (44),
whilst abolishing the requirement for planning permissions for fracking under
land adjacent to fracking wells (45).

• Between 2014
and 2017 the government poured £2.4 billion into fossil fuel industries in low
and middle-income nations, locking them into decades of dependency on oil and
gas (46).

• The
government cuts to home energy efficiency projects resulted in a 98% reduction
in new installations between 2010 and 2018 (47).

• In July
2015 the government scrapped the planned tighter energy efficiency standards
that were due to come into force in 2016 (48). The new regulations would have
required all new homes to carbon neutral, with better standards of insulation,
more energy efficient lighting and other appliances. The new homes would
provide with various renewable technologies for power and heat, with
housebuilders being able to deliver equivalent carbon savings off site.

• The
government has given the go-ahead for a new runaway and massive expansion at
Heathrow Airport and encouraged expansion of aviation at regional airports. It
did this despite being warned by its own Committee on Climate Change (CCC) advisers
that it would be incompatible with the government’s carbon reduction targets
that are legally required by the Climate Change Act, at current passenger duty
levels (49). In October the government rejected the advice of the CCC to
include aviation and shipping in the UK’s 2050 Net-Zero target (50).

9. The crimes of are clear: Crimes against humanity and genocide

The crimes outlined are directed overwhelmingly at the young
and also the most vulnerable nations in the world. The offence of ‘crimes against humanity’ is
directed at a specific group - the young. Indeed, the younger a person is, the
more they will suffer.

The crime of ‘genocide’ is clear because several low-lying
island states will be annihilated. There will be very many additional deaths
elsewhere, mainly in the poorest, predominantly non-white nations of the world.

The scale of death and suffering will almost certainly equal
that inflicted by the great 20th Century tyrants, including Hitler
and Stalin. But there is a very real risk that the suffering will be far worse,
killing many billions of people. Never
before in history has a politician proposed a course of action that would lead
to hundreds of millions of deaths, let alone many billions of deaths.

These crimes are clear and are unprecedented in scale. The
victim nations can be identified, many individuals can be identified and the
section within society most targeted has been identified – the young.

Those with primary responsibility have been identified. This
clearly falls within the legislation referred to on Page 1, so it is now for
the police to mount a thorough investigation and charge these three people with
the criminal offences.

10. Defence

It seems likely that those representing the three Prime
Ministers will argue that government policy was formulated in the context of
wider economic considerations and within an international framework agreed by
the United Nations.

However, the science is clear that short term financial
benefits would impose far greater costs in the future. The economist Nicholas
Stern produced the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change in 2006
calling for 1% of GDP to be invested to stop climate breakdown and warned, without
action, the overall costs of climate change would be equivalent to losing at least
5% of GDP each year, now and forever. The report warned that a wider range of
risks and impacts could increase this to 20% of GDP or more, also indefinitely.
Stern warned that 5–6°C of temperature increase is "a real
possibility" (51).

It should be noted that in October 2019 the Bank of England
governor, Mark Carney, warned of a financial collapse if the climate emergency
is not tackled. He said the longer action to reverse emissions was delayed, the
more the risk of collapse would grow (52).

In addition, it must be noted that in October 2018 the
landmark IPCC report called on governments to cut emissions by 45% by 2030 and
achieve net-zero by 2050. The government’s policies do not align with the
scientific advice and the UK is not willing to take a fair share of the
remaining global carbon budget (53).

The Paris Agreement allows more latitude for developing
countries, which means that developed countries, including Britain, need to cut
more quickly. Part of the reason why global emissions are still continuing to
rise is because developed nations, like the UK, are not willing to restrict
their emissions to an equitable share of the IPCC’s remaining carbon
budget. As said above, the UK
industrialised around 200 years before China and therefore has a greater
responsibility to cut its emissions more quickly.

It is also likely that a defence will be offered that the UK
has cut its emissions by around 42% since 1990 but that is mainly because so
much UK manufacturing has been moved to other nations, including China. In fact,
the UK has made modest reductions in emissions by reducing the use of coal for
generating electricity and by deploying more wind and other renewables sources
of electricity generation. When looking at greenhouse gas emissions associated
with UK consumption, our emissions have only dropped by around 11% (54).

11. Conclusion

David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson have all
supported a range of policies that increase greenhouse gas emissions from some
sectors and slow the pace of decarbonising in other sectors. The three are
aware of the implications of these policies upon the young and the most
vulnerable nations.

All three are aware that climate change is causing mass loss
of life today and could kill billions of people in the future.

All three are aware that their policies do not meet the
requirements laid down by the international community (the IPCC recommendations
and the UN COP process – Conference of the Parties).

All three are aware that their policies do not meet the
advice of government’s own statutory advisory body, the Committee on Climate
Change.

On 14 October 2019 an Environment Bill was announced in the
Queen's Speech and introduced to Parliament (55). None of its provisions include
policies that will enable the UK to reduce greenhouse at a dynamic and rapid
pace. The Environment Bill provides a clear signal that the government and the
current Prime minister, Boris Johnson, is not committed to taking the action
needed to avoid further mass loss of life.

23. 1
billion more people to be infected by Zika Virus and Dengue fever by 2080: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-health-mosquitoes/zika-dengue-to-threaten-up-to-a-billion-more-as-climate-warms-idUSKCN1R92DQ

Sunday, November 17, 2019

Vote for Trees

Conservatives talk of planting 30.000,000 tree, LibDems promise 60,000,000. That's just under one tree per person. At a normal planting density for broadleaf woodland of about 1500 trees per hectare, sixty million would cover 400 of Britains 200,000 square kilometres, some 0.2% of the land area.
Compare that figure with the 8% or 16,000 square kilometres of grouse moor, an artificial habitat that was covered in woodland before people cut the trees down.

The gulf between these political election promises and what is required to restore our ecosystems and begin to mitigate the climate emergency shows the depth of our crisis of politics.

Meanwhile the Green Party has a rather more grown-up approach than shouting numbers at each other, but the implications take forestry onto a quite different order of magnitude.

Take this Policy Objective: "Increase the area of cover in the UK to average cover across Europe."

And what would that look like? Nothing like what the promise from the Tories and LibDems, that's for sure.

Picture credit: By Radom1967 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76182177This article by Damian Carrington has a much more realistic framing of the issue than the Tories and LibDems have managed. The talk here is on one and a half billion trees.